Saturday 24 October 2009

City Of Life And Death

Went to watch 南京!南京! or City Of Life And Death with HL and Vim.

It was a Chinese film about the Nanjing Massacre in 1937. For most movies I always know what to expect but with Nanjing I was being experimental and had wanted to watch a China made movie ever since I returned from Mainland.

My impression with the Rape Of Nanjing was not at all sufficient. I knew that it was the Chinese holoclaust where many chinese were brutually murdered or raped by Japanese. But beyond that I know not what to expect other than the extent of a documentary film.

The movie was presented in black and white. Grim and dastardly. The Nanjing soldiers despite putting up a brave resistance had lost China's capital to the better equipped Japs. Liu Ye, the only Chinese actor I knew in the movie was brilliant until the very end. Liu Ye had minimal dialogue and had expressed himself impressively with his eyes. Until his very end, which was fifteen minutes into the show.

Yes, the star of the movie, the ironman Liu Ye himself perished fifteen minutes into the movie.

The fall of Nanjing then unfolded the tragedy of hopesfall and pain. All men in Nanjing are rounded up and machine gunned, burned or buried alive.

What was left was women and children, a lawless capital with restless Jap soldiers with endless ammunitions.
 
Ironically, the only haven that stands between them was a Nazis businessman Rabe who founded a safe house. Like savage beasts, when the Japs wanted to expand their comfort women population, they cunningly devise all sorts of methods to gain entry into the safe house.

The movie was infested with gore, merciless slaughter, rape, rape and more rape. Streets of Nanjing were littered with corpses, metal barbs and singings of the victorious Japanese soldiers. Children were thrown off buildings to coerce folks into submission. Naked corpses of comfort women piled up \and discarded past the lines of eager Jap soldiers waiting to have their ways with the remaining battered and near death comfort women. Some women were raped to death, while others went insane and were shot like dogs. This is a movie of intense fear and hopeslessness.

Perhaps the film's subtle message was the hope of life and the courage of self sacrifice, but those values were overshadowed by its horror and japanese atrocities. To me, it is like watching Hostel or Saw, but worse. In torture porn, it's quite individually directed. The fear is contained compared to Nanjing's travesty of death and death of your loved ones.

This film is suitable for the older generation of grandpas and grandmas who cursed whenever a Jap drama came on telly and blew up whenever their forgiving grandchildren who don't give a fuck about history, don't have roots and will grow up to be dipshits.

This movie is also suitable for all Japanese people who shunned the atrocities that their forefathers did and wondered why we Chinese hated them so much. They should watch it and feel the shame that they should be having.

 

Thursday 22 October 2009

Upstairs

I'm writing this because I can't sleep.

Someone is dropping coins a floor upstairs. Heavy, loud coins are being dropped, rolled around and picked again. Sometimes it's a coin and sometimes it's a lot of them. Sometimes they sounded like marbles and sometimes it scratched at every corner of my ceiling.

It's two in the morning and it has been going on for two hours now.

I don't want to go upstairs and complain, because it will be the same old stale story: some dead kid who like to play coins in the middle of the night used to live there and stuff like that.

Why can't it be sex noises instead?

 

505

Grand Taoist Master = GTM

Before the GTM went into the top of the mountain, before he stepped into the cave to meditate, the GTM did before he waved his disciples goodbyes and before he would enter a ten year trance that would promise enlightenment, he bought with him only a change of robes and his grass slippers.

And ten dollars.

'Why ten dollars?' Tze Wen, his youngest disciple asked the GTM before he went off.

'So perhaps I can purchase a bowl of noodles when I complete my training in the mountains.' GTM replied.

Tze Wen pressed on, 'But a bowl of noodles only cost two bucks, master.'

The GTM smiled and replied, 'Read more news, you idiotic calf. Inflation will kill us all.'

With that, the GTM went into the mountains.

Wile the rest of the sect went on with their business, Tze Wen though naive decided to wait for the GTM at the foot of the mountain. He read everyday.

At only the fifth year, Tze Wen caught the GTM coming down from the mountain. GTM was unshaved, smelly but oddly radiant.

'My master, you have anticipated that it would take ten years before you could gain enlightenment and nirvana, it has only been five years. I know because I read the news everyday. Have you already been enlightened or are you giving up?' Tze Wen asked.

GTM just smiled and asked to be lead to town.

In town GTM used his ten dollars to purchase a pack of cigarettes instead of food.

'Why are you smoking? It's forbidden in our sect.' Tze Wen surprised. 'What happen?'

'I have reach enlightenment.' GTM traded his clothes with the stable boy. 'My enlightenment is that there is no more enlightenment. This is it. Live your life now.'

GTM completed his sentence by throwing off his grass slippers and smoked his way into the crowd.